William George Aston (9 April 1841 – 22 November 1911) was an Anglo-Irish<!-- The evidence supports this; "British" as opposed to "Anglo-Irish" implies the island of Great Britain, which is definitely wrong. The infobox and lead contradicted each other, so unified them to this. But a source should ideally be found. --> diplomat, author, and scholar of the languages and histories of Korea and Japan.

Early life

Aston was born near Derry, Ireland. He distinguished himself at Queen's College, Belfast (now Queen's University Belfast), which he attended 1859–1863. There he received a very thorough philological training in Latin, Greek, French, German and modern history. One of his professors was James McCosh.

Career

Aston was appointed student interpreter to the British Legation in Japan on August 16, 1864 after passing a competitive examination and obtaining an honorary certificate on August 10. He mastered the theory of the Japanese verb, and in Edo began, with Ernest Mason Satow, those profound researches into the Japanese language which laid the foundations of the critical study of the Japanese language by western scholars. He was appointed CMG in the 1889 Birthday Honours.

Japan

Aston made a major contribution to the fledgling study of Japan's language and history in the 19th century. Along with Ernest Mason Satow and Basil Hall Chamberlain, he was one of three major British Japanologists active in Japan during the 19th century.

Aston was the first translator of the Nihongi into the English language (1896). Other publications were two Japanese grammars (1868 and 1872) and A History of Japanese Literature (1899). He lectured to the Asiatic Society of Japan several times, and many of his papers are published in their Transactions. and they were published in 2004. This part of Aston's personal collection is now preserved in the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg.

  • 1869 — A Short Grammar of the Japanese Spoken Language
  • 1872 — A Grammar of the Japanese Written Language, with a short chrestomathy
  • 1877 — A Grammar of the Japanese Written Language
  • 1888 — A Grammar of the Japanese Spoken Language
  • 1889 — Early Japanese history
  • 1896 — Nihongi; Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A.D. 697
  • 1899 — A History of Japanese Literature (available at Wikisource)
  • 1899 — Toriwi--its derivation
  • 1902 — Littérature japonaise
  • 1905 — Shinto, the Way of the Gods.
  • 1907 — Shinto, the Ancient Religion of Japan

Articles

  • 1879 — "H.M.S. Phaeton at Nagasaki," Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. 7, pp.&nbsp;323–336.

See also

  • Anglo-Japanese relations
  • British Japan Consular Service
  • List of ambassadors of the United Kingdom to Korea

Notes

References

  • Ruxton, Ian. (2008). Sir Ernest Satow's private letters to W.G. Aston and F.V. Dickins: the Correspondence of a Pioneer Japanologist from 1870 to 1918. Morrisville, North Carolina: Lulu Press. ;
  • A Grammar of the Japanese Spoken Language (1888) By W.G. Aston at Archive.org
  • The History of Japanese Literature by W.G. Aston (Yokohama: Kelly and Walsh, 1899)